We All Go A Little Mad, Sometimes
by WickedGame
Summary: Written for the 2007 Gundam Wing Shameathon on LJ. Five pilots damaged by war and how they all end up inside a mental hospital. A character study on how, why, and supporting your friends as best as you can.


Title: We All Go A Little Mad, Sometimes

Author: WickedGame

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Pairings: Hinted 12, unrequited 4+3

Warnings: foul language, not beta read, frank talk of attempted suicide.

Notes: Written for the 2007 Shame-a-thon.

The doctor peered over the top of his glasses, face intent. He looked down at his notepad, wrote something down, and then took a deep breath. He looked around the room at the five young men in front of him and cleared his throat.

"How is everyone doing this morning?" he asked, the tone of his voice suggesting he knew he wouldn't get an answer. True to form, his five patients didn't say a word.

He shuffled his papers and then looked at the blonde young man sitting across from him. The young man had eyes puffy with sleeplessness and lips turned downward in disapproval.

"Quatre, you're the last one of the five Gundam pilots to join us here at the Preventers hospital. How has it been for you here so far?"

The blonde looked directly and the doctor and smirked. "Just fine, doctor. Wouldn't you be?"

I'm the last one to come here. I was present when Trowa checked in here, and heard about it when Duo was brought in. Heero's hospitalization had been televised (bastard paparazzi), and I had received a short letter from Wufei once he got inside. But I held out for as long as I could, not wanting to believe there was anything wrong with me.

But there was. There really was. I didn't even realize it completely until I almost killed a man. He was trying to mug me. He was tall, skinny, and unsure on his feet. Before my mind had any chance to reason I had him on the ground. I broke his arm when he fell, and then I choked him until I saw his face turn blue.

He survived, but only barely. I was arrested. My father's good name went up in smoke. I was convicted of assault but was deemed mentally unstable and was sent here to the Preventer's hospital instead of to prison. Hopefully I could carry out my sentence here and then rejoin society as a productive person. My sisters took over the family business and I know they pretty much hope I won't try to interfere with them ever again.

They don't have to worry. I'm not going to be leading a life like that anymore. The PTSD and insomnia are reasons enough to try and live as simple and quiet a life as possible. That's all I really want anyway.

I had hoped Trowa and I might be able to recapture some of the attraction that I thought we'd shared during the wars, but I don't think it's ever going to be possible. Trowa has his own room, and he rarely leaves it. He's become a sort of recluse, only coming out for therapy and meds. I overheard a nurse explaining to an aide that the reason Trowa had his own room was because he didn't sleep much and when he did he always had violent nightmares, along with dissociative episodes that indicated that Trowa didn't live completely on this plane of reality. They didn't want anyone staying with him for fear that he would hurt someone, someday, and not know he was doing it.

The only reason he came in anyway was because of Catherine. Catherine had helped him see what was going on, and she was the one who called me and asked me to help her get Trowa into the hospital. She comes and visits him sometimes, but the circus keeps her really busy.

Trowa has a stuffed lion collection in his room, but don't tell anyone I told you that. I'm not even supposed to know. But one time, while he was out, I couldn't resist sneaking a peek inside and I saw them. A plethora of stuffed lions of all shapes and sizes. I looked but I didn't touch.

Duo came after Trowa. Duo had gone downhill quickly after the war: he was paranoid, suffered from flashbacks, and had become an alcoholic. Wufei brought him in after calling me to let me know where he was taking Duo, and why. Apparently, Duo had stunk like dead fish, was wearing clothing that had seen better days in a dumpster, and was sick as all hell. He hadn't been eating and was violent when he was denied a drink. I felt bad for my friend, but I felt even worse when Heero was brought in.

That was an interesting story. Everyone had expected Heero to go to work with Relena after the wars, and he did. Or rather, he tried to. But he found even drawing his gun to be almost abhorrent. He wanted peace but I think he knew he was done enforcing it himself. And when he hesitated to kill an assassin that was after Relena he knew he was done. He didn't even pack his things before he left. He told no one where he was going and erased all of his tracks. The Preventers searched for him, concerned for his health and welfare. They found him months later in an isolated cabin. He had become intensely paranoid and prone to extreme mood swings.

Wufei came in after an incident in which he put his service revolver in his mouth and played Russian roulette. Luckily, he won and didn't blow his face off. It was at that time that he realized how bad he'd gotten and he came in of his own volition. He had been living by himself, and never saw anyone outside of work. We all suspected he was spending all his time meditating, and it turned out we were right: he had been meditating, but not in any kind of healthy way. He had become obsessed with trying to find answers to life's questions, blinding himself to everything else.

The doctors have stated again and again that post-traumatic stress disorder can take many forms, and that all of us had myriad other problems besides that one core problem. It could take months to get over it, it could take years, but one thing's for certain: we won't ever be the same.

I think they all think I'm kind of blind to what goes on here in the hospital. But I'm not. For instance, I can hear Heero and Duo in the next room. Oh yes, I can hear them. Duo's grunting and Heero's panting; the walls aren't thick here.

I guess it's no surprise they got together. Duo was the only person Heero would allow the hospital to put into his room, and Heero was the only person Duo didn't sneer at. They had some kind of bond that was stronger that any bond I had, that's for sure. I know Quatre wanted us to have a bond, and at one time I think I wanted that too, but there's too much there now. There's the PTSD, and then there's the fact that I really don't like the idea of being touched or held. Quatre deserves someone who wants him.

I don't want anyone, really.

I've become very apathetic. Wufei wants out of here at some point, as does Duo; but I don't care where I am, so long as I am safe. Here I have medication, food, a bed, and people to talk to if I ever get the urge. The only things I ever miss are the animals and Catherine, but Catherine comes to see me every once and awhile and the animals will live on without me.

Catherine. If it weren't for her I wouldn't be alive. She helped me in the only way a sister could. That's how I loved her, like a sister. And she made me realize how low I was, and how desperate I'd become. She cried and told me that the hospital was the last place she wanted me but that she was too afraid to keep me with her. It was the best thing anyone's ever done for me. She was bawling when she left me here, and Quatre led her gently away. They hadn't liked each other much but in me they found a common goal, I guess.

I wasn't happy to see the others come in, but I wasn't really surprised by it either. It seemed almost inevitable. We'd been drawn together during the war and we were drawn together here too. We just didn't seem to function well unless the others were around.

I watched as they came in, one by one. They all went through the same process of rebellion and grieving as they slowly came to realize just how screwed up they were and just how long they might be here. I heard the crying at night and the yelling during the day.

But not me. I stopped crying and yelling long ago. I take my pills and go to my sessions and just try to manage getting by, one day at a time. It was one foot in front of the other for me, and I doubted it would be any other way.

An alcoholic. That's the last thing I wanted to be. But before I knew it I was stealing money from church offering plates to buy cheap bottles of nasty tasting whiskey at the local liquor store. I would wake up in gutters, on park benches, in ditches, in tunnels; it didn't matter to me. I'd get up, dust myself off, and stumble to find my next drink.

At first I couldn't even remember how it started. After the war I lived alone, very alone, and tried to make my way as a scrap yard worker. But I was tense, and jumpy. I looked over my shoulder constantly and thought people were always following me. I got an ulcer from the stress of it all, and was forced to quite working in the scrap yard when I nearly beat a man for looking at me sideways.

Then the nightmares started. I don't talk about them in group, but I've talked about them in private session. They were nightmares, but they weren't your average boogey-man nightmares. I had visions of being chased down long, endless corridors, hounds nipping at my ankles. I had dreams of people burning to death, right in front of me. I had nightmares of being adrift in space, no air and no light to save me. I had nightmares that cost me many night of sleep, and also cost me a piece of my unstable sanity.

So, to try and start sleeping better, I started drinking. It started with one drink, and then two…you can see where I'm going with this. Before I knew it I could only sleep if I drank enough to pass out.

I got sick. I got even skinnier than I was before. I lost my apartment and started living under a bridge with a bunch of other crack fiends and alcoholics. I gave blowjobs for cash and probably would've let people fuck me in the ass if they had wanted, so long as they gave me money for one more bottle of alcohol.

Wufei found me one day. I still don't know how. He hauled me to my feet, cuffed me, and dragged me off. He brought me directly to the hospital and told me that he would kill me if I even thought about not checking myself in.

So I did.

I hate this place. It's dark, quiet, and has no personality. The only thing that makes it bearable is Heero.

Now that's another weird story: how Heero and I ended up fucking each other senseless every night. There was a shortage of rooms when Heero came in, and they asked me if it would be okay if he stayed with me. For some reason, I said I didn't mind. So he moved in with me. It wasn't long before I had a nightmare that woke him, and he climbed into my bed with me. He told me that the doctors had told him that human interaction would help him out, and he trusted me. So he held me, and I let him.

Only a month or so later, I woke one morning to him rubbing his erection against my leg. I reached down and wrapped my hand around it, and he moaned. I jacked him off under the covers, and then he helped me relieve my own pressure. Things moved quickly after that, and soon we were fucking each other almost every night.

It's not a relationship, per se. I care about him, and he cares about me, but I don't know if it goes beyond that. I'm pretty sure this never could have happened outside the hospital. I don't know if that's a good thing.

But I go to therapy, every day. I have treatments for my alcoholism. And the medications help the nightmares stay away.

And to keep warm, I have Heero by my side at night, under my covers.

Aim and fire. That's all I had to do. That's all that was required of me, and I couldn't do it. I can still hear the gasping of Relena's breath, the look of victory on the assassins face, and the disbelief on the rookie agent's face as he shot the assassin. I can remember the shock on everyone's face when they realized I had frozen in place.

I can remember running for the door. I remember driving away. And then, for a long time, there was nothing except silence.

How I ended up in that cabin, I'll never know. Everything from that time is a little hazy, and sometimes spotty at best. The doctors say I had a dissociative episode that caused a psychotic break from reality. I don't even know how long it took me to get where I went. My car was gone when I got there, so I knew that I had somehow gotten rid of it at some point in time. I don't know how I ate…

Damn! It's always such a damned struggle to try and remember. I don't know that I want to remember. They keep encouraging me to, they say it will help with the healing if I remember what happened; but I don't believe them. I don't really think anything could help with this healing. There was just too much there, stuff I hadn't even told them about.

The experiments. The…favors. The drugs. The twisted procedures that Doctor J called 'therapy'. There was so much there, and even I wondered sometimes why I wasn't completely catatonic and curled in a ball on the floor.

In a way, I guess I'm lucky. Lucky I lasted this long. Lucky I didn't cause the death of Relena Darlian-Peacecraft. Lucky I didn't succeed in killing myself during Operation Meteor, no matter how hard I tried. But on the other hand, there was so much blood on my hands….so many bodies left behind.

They keep telling me that it's all in the past – that only I can shape my future. But I don't know if I can. I just don't know that I have the strength anymore.

I miss space. In space, no one could hear my crying, or my screaming. In space I didn't have to worry about someone watching me without my knowing or cornering me in an alley and trying to kill me. In space, I couldn't get a lot of blood on my hands. Not anymore.

I don't know that they'll ever let me out of here. But if they ever do, the first thing I'm going to do is buy a ship with what little money I have left and go out to space. And there I'll stay.

Duo would be hurt if I didn't take him with me, but I think he knows that I couldn't. If it weren't for the fact that we shared a room I don't think I ever could have expressed how I feel for him. I think we always would've just been friends and never anything else. But we do share a room, and I do care, and so our arrangement is fine.

But I still long for space. I still long for a place to scream.

I can still taste it: the sharp, bitter taste of gunmetal inside of my mouth. I wake up every morning with the taste of it there, a subliminal reminder of why I came here.

But, the taste of gunmetal was only one part of waking up, when I slept anyway. There was also the sweating, the panting, and the tears. Nightmares that should only exist in horror stories.

I had to come in. I just knew, as soon as the metal started clicking against my teeth as my hand shook, that this was where I belonged. With the people who had seen what I had seen, the people that had been through what I'd been through; all of us still boys when the fate of the universe was settled on our shoulders.

Granted, I got myself involved. I could've stayed out of it. But Meiran…she would be here instead of me if she were still alive; if she had survived the war in the first place. She was a strong woman, but I won't try to fool myself into thinking that even she was immune to the effects of a war that never should have happened. I know I shouldn't have survived the war; I escaped death more times than I cared to admit. Even death sought by my own hand.

At least I could sleep now. The doctors and the pills made sure of that. There were white pills, red pills, yellow pills…it was like a rainbow in a cup, two times a day. Meiran would laugh at me and call me weak. She'd insist that Nataku didn't need drugs to get by. I think this every time I swallow my rainbow and the water that goes along with it.

The attempted swallowing of my gun wasn't the only thing that landed me here. Unbeknownst to myself, I had somehow acquired a deep-seated fear of small, dark places. When I was made and consequently captured during an undercover operation, they threw me in a very small, and very dark room. I didn't know how long I was in there until they told me later that it was forty-eight hours. It felt like an eternity to me. An eternity of ghosts talking to me, and of sobbing as I realized I may never get out of there. I bloodied my nails scratching at the walls, and broke my knuckles punching everything that surrounded me.

I thought I was fine, afterward. They de-briefed me, took me to the hospital, I stayed overnight. I checked out against the doctor's wishes and went home.

A week later I returned to work. But I wasn't there for long. Because then came the paranoia, and the inexplicable rages for no reason. When I was put on suspension for fighting with another agent in the break room, I had a nervous breakdown. When it became night and I'd hear a strange noise I'd have panic attacks that could only be solved by holding my gun close to me.

I stopped sleeping. I stopped eating. There were too many nightmares and I was never hungry. I didn't want to leave my apartment. I became to afraid to even exist.

And that's when I put my gun in my mouth. And that's when I almost pulled the trigger.

Sometimes I still wish I had. This isn't any kind of life, here. We're in stasis, afraid of our own shadows. We worked for peace and can't enjoy a minute of it unless we're heavily medicated.

And most of all, I miss being able to make a difference. I miss being able to call myself a Preventer agent.

I'll never be able to get out of here.

The doctor closed his folder, took off his wire-rimmed glasses, and rubbed his temples.

"We'll never get anywhere with the lot of you if you can't open up to me, or any of the other doctors," he said as he looked at each of his patients in turn. "What will it take to get you to open up, to let us in?"

To his surprise, it was Trowa who answered for the group. "You don't want us to open up, Doctor. You really don't. If we do, you might just end up over here with us."

-The End-


End file.
